264 IN TIBET AND CHINESE TURKESTAN.
been absent, but his wife, a kind and good woman, made amends by sending chapatties fried in butter, and lassi (a sort of curd), about all she had to offer. The people are poor, with little or no money to spend, and they live mostly on the proceeds of a few months' labour in summer. The principal articles of consumption are preparations of *milk and Indian corn, and the fact that they thrive on such diet shows that they are possessed of wonderful digestive power. Tea, flour, and rice are delicacies too costly to be used except on rare occasions. The household articles which came under my observation in the tents of the poorer people were some coarse numnahs, some plain, others ornamented, pillows, a large cooking-pot, supported on an iron tripod, and a couple of " chagans." If the weather happened to be hot a few spare coats would be lying about. The tents were of simple construction, consisting of one main room, of which a small part was separated by a screen of reeds to serve as a store-room. There was no woman's quarter ; the two sexes mixed freely together, morality as understood in Europe being non-existent. The ex-Beg's tent at Kizil, and the tent which I occupied at Zad were much neater than those in general use, and were ornamented with a border of reeds, arranged vertically to a height of about four feet from the ground. The tent I occupied at Zad contained two piles of ornamented numnahs, and it had an air of comfort which indicated comparative wealth on the part of the owner, probably not acquired by any enterprise of his own, but rather saved out of the squeezings he had effected during his period of office as Beg.
The Kulan Urgi valley below Issok Bulok Agzi contains few Kirghiz, and, according to all accounts, the valley down to that encampment is, during summer, forsaken by nearly all its inhabitants. When the warm
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